Saturday, May 14, 2011

DONYALE LUNA - JEFF BUCKLEY

EVERYBODY HERE WANT'S YOU

DONYALE LUNA IN GALANOS

HARPER'S BAZAAR APRIL 1965

RICHARD AVEDON

Donyale Luna was born Peggy Anne Freeman in Detroit, Michigan. Although records show otherwise, Luna insisted that her biological father had the surname Luna, not Freeman. Regardless of the truth about the surname, she appeared to have been born under a lucky star.

Said Luna, "I started at the top."

DONYALE LUNA IN GALANOS

HARPER'S BAZAAR APRIL 1965

RICHARD AVEDON

Starting with playing small roles in a Detroit repertory theater, she was spotted leaving a TV rehearsal by photographer David McCabe who arranged an appointment for her in New York with Harper's Bazaar.

DONYALE LUNA IN GALANOS

HARPER'S BAZAAR APRIL 1965

RICHARD AVEDON

The editors were so impressed when she walked into the office that they put a sketch of her on the January 1965 cover - essentially becoming the first black cover model. She was soon signed to work exclusively with photographer Richard Avedon.

DONYALE LUNA

HARPER'S BAZAAR JANUARY 1965

KATERINA DENZINGER

DONYALE LUNA WEARS GALANOS

HARPER'S BAZAAR APRIL 1965

RICHARD AVEDON

She was an instant hit with the New York Art Scene, was embraced by Andy Warhol, and became a member of Warhol’s film entourage. Luna appeared in several of his experimental films including 1965’s Camp, Screen Tests and a reel titled Donyale Luna, a version of ‘Snow White.’ Salvador Dali considered her one of his favorite subjects.

DONYALE LUNA IN BILL BLASS FOR MAURICE RETNER

HARPER'S BAZAAR APRIL 1965

RICHARD AVEDON

By the end of the year she had moved on to Europe where she became the first African American model to appear on the cover of Vogue. A month later in a Time magazine feature, “The Luna Year”, Luna was hailed as “unquestionably the hottest model in Europe at the moment.” Reporting that Luna was “A new heavenly body who, because of her striking singularity, promises to remain on high for many a season.” Beatrix Miller, then editor of British Vogue was quoted in the Time piece saying of Luna, "She happens to be a marvelous shape, all sort of angular and immensely tall and strange. She has a kind of bite and personality."

DONYALE LUNA IN TRIGERE

HARPER'S BAZAAR APRIL 1965

RICHARD AVEDON

HARPER'S BAZAAR JUNE 1965

RICHARD AVEDON

"SATYRICON" AND THE EYES OF DONYALE LUNA

VOGUE MAY 1970

Her International acclaim led to movie offers from top European directors Federico Fellini, Otto Preminger and Carmel Bene. For Otto Preminger’s Skidoo, Luna played the role of God’s mistress. She caused a stir as Oenothea in Fellini’s Satyricon, and landed the starring role in Carmel Bene’s Salome. Other film roles included the fire-eater’s assistant in Rolling Stone’s Rock and Roll Circus, and Luna appeared in Peter Whitehead’s Tonite Let’s All Make Love in London, a semi-documentary about 'swinging London.'

DONYALE LUNA - SATYRICON

VOGUE APRIL 1969

FRANCO PINNA

In an April 1975 Playboy magazine, Richard Avedon addressed Luna's abrupt departure from the American fashion pages. “For reasons of racial prejudice, and the economics of the fashion business, I was never permitted to photograph her for publication again.”

DONYALE LUNA

LUIGI CAZZANIGA

PLAYBOY APRIL 1975

"I like class, I like taste, I like style, and, most of all, I love respect - and there's very little respect in America." Donyale LunaPlayboy April 1975

"I have many visions of myself when I go through photographic trips," Donyale has said. "I've gone through periods from Nefertiti to Josephine Baker."Donyale LunaPlayboy April 1975

LUIGI CAZZANIGA

PLAYBOY APRIL 1975

LUIGI CAZZANIGA

PLAYBOY APRIL 1975

"There's a great division coming about on this planet. There are going to be a lot of people who will die because they just don't know how to live. They don't know what life's about, they don't know how to give, how to love - nor do they want to. And those who are beautiful enough - I don't mean physically but something beyond that - they will have the chance to learn how to fly, to be beautiful, to rise above the level of the normal human - to be superior beings first and eventually gods and goddesses."

Donyale Luna

Playboy April 1975

LUIGI CAZZANIGA

PLAYBOY APRIL 1975

Her relationships were many and varied, from the Rolling Stone’s Brian Jones, to actor Klaus Kinski with engagements to Austrian actor Maximilian Schell and German actor George Willings. Luna had a daughter named Dream with Italian photographer Luigi Cazzaniga who photographed her for the April 1975 issue of Playboy.

LUIGI CAZZANIGA

PLAYBOY APRIL 1975

A larger than life figure admitting to a fondness for LSD, Luna eventually sabotaged her career by missing bookings and exhibiting strange behavior while working. Luna died in a Rome clinic after a drug overdose. She was thirty-four years old.

Donyale Luna

1945 - 1979

Once a Great Beauty

CORPUS CRISTI CAROL

Jeff Buckley was the son of the legendary California-based musician Tim Buckley, who, in his short decade-long career played with Nico, opened for the Mother’s of Invention, Jimi Hendrix, the Doors and upstaged the Jefferson Airplane at the height of their fame. A musician’s musician, Tim Buckley received more acclaim from other performers than from the record-buying public and developed a drug addiction that eased the disappointments of recordings that were not widely accepted. Buckley overdosed in June of 1975 dying from acute heroin and alcohol intoxication.

Jeff Buckley was born in 1966 and died in a tragic drowning accident in Memphis on May 29, 1997 shortly before completing the follow-up to Grace, his highly acclaimed debut studio album.

He developed his talent in New York City's avant-garde club scene and tiny coffee houses of the East Village, emerging as one of the most remarkable musical artists of his generation, acclaimed by audiences, critics, fellow musicians and some of the most revered musicians of our time.

Released in 1994, Buckley’s first studio album Grace, had praise from Bob Dylan, who named Buckley as “one of the great songwriters of this decade.”

David Bowie, named Grace as on of the ten albums he would take with him to a desert island. Jimmy Page is reported to have considered Grace close to being his “Favorite album of the decade.”

It was not until early 1997 that Buckley was ready to complete his follow-up album Sketches for my Sweetheart the Drunk.

The night Buckley died, he was on his way to meet his band to begin three weeks of rehearsals for my Sweetheart, the Drunk; Grace producer Andy Wallace, was to join them in late June at Easley McCain Recording in Memphis. That evening, Buckley went swimming in the Wolf River Harbor – a slack water channel of the Mississippi River. Fully clothed and singing Led Zeppelin’s Whole Lotta Love, he was with a roadie in his band, Keith Foti, who remained on shore moving a radio and guitar out of reach of the wake from a passing tugboat. By the time Foti looked back, Buckley had vanished. Despite a major rescue effort into the night, Buckley remained missing. Six days later, two locals spotted his body in the Mississippi River near a riverboat.

Buckley’s autopsy showed no signs of drugs or alcohol in his system. His death was ruled as an accidental drowning. He was thirty-one-years-old.